


Pas de Deux

by Paraprosdokia (ChangeableConsistency)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Can be read as either Clint/Natasha or Clint & Natasha, Gen, Interrogation, Natasha POV, Spy Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 16:22:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17770172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChangeableConsistency/pseuds/Paraprosdokia
Summary: Natasha’s side of the Loki interrogation scene.





	Pas de Deux

She waits until his back is turned. 

It is a cheap trick but based on his performance in Stuttgart he will appreciate a flair for dramatics. 

He has been pacing since Fury left; he is trying to appear frustrated, or at least bored. And there is probably some truth to it, but it is mostly play acting. 

He is exactly where he wants to be, which means his plan involves the helicarrier. 

Or maybe something _on_ the helicarrier. Does he know about the Phase Two weapons? How much has Clint revealed?

She intends to find out everything, preferably before everything goes to the dogs. 

She steps out of the shadows and waits in front of the glass just as he turns away, silent until he reaches the furthest point in the containment cell, testing his perception. 

She shifts her weight, no more, just enough for the barest creak of leather, if that. Something that a normal human would not be able to detect through the ambient noise and shadow of the carrier. 

“There’s not many people that can sneak up on me.” 

She has surprised him, but it is more that he is surprised that he could be surprised. There is an edge of amusement to his tone. 

Useful? 

Maybe. 

She runs through options for a fraction of a second before replying, aiming for impressed-but-hiding-it, one manipulator to another, a statement, not a question, “But you figured I would come.”

“After. After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend, as a balm. And I would cooperate.”

Disappointing. 

It is a weak entrée. She is not sure if he is trying to make her think that he underestimates her or if he is actually that foolish. 

For now she will err on the side of caution. 

He is expecting her to play “good cop”, which she is definitely going to laugh about later with Clint. 

“I want to know what you have done to Agent Barton.”

Clint has been top of her mind ever since Coulson’s quietly strained, “Barton’s been compromised.”

If he really thinks of her as some soft woman, reliant on her charms to get what she wants (some part of him equating feminine with weak? No, if anything he thinks she is weak because she is human), if his reactions are not hidden under ten layers of misdirection, which they probably are, even if he is as concerned about her as he should be (he is not; they never are), Clint is still her best angle. 

He is more likely to let something slip when it comes to her partner than his plans, and with a little luck Clint will have found a way to send her a message. 

“I'd say I've expanded his mind.”

Clint could have shot Fury in the head. 

He had to have known the vest would have left him alive. 

Hurting, pissed off, but alive. 

She has to believe there is still something of Clint buried under whatever he has done to him with that scepter. His phrasing indicates that Clint has not been completely overwritten, which supports her theory. 

She sizes him up. 

Flattery? 

The prince who would be king, his rise unstoppable?

Yes. 

How... pedestrian. 

“And once you have won. Once you are king of the mountain. What happens to his mind?” 

Cross arms, defensive. Keep him focused on Clint. 

Let him move around her. 

He preens a little. 

Of course he does. 

Let him think he is getting under her skin.

She wills him to only see what she wants him to see: a stoic front. 

Callous even. 

Manufactured. 

Let him think she is hiding her heart, when in truth she is hiding that she has none. She cannot afford one, not right now. 

She shows him she only cares about one thing: Clint.

“Is this love, Agent Romanoff?”

A taunt. 

A hit. 

Hers, not his. 

And one that gives her more than she had expected. 

He sees love as a weakness; his weakness and a weakness in others. 

He sees that weakness in her. 

Clint’s doing? Playing up their connection, getting him to associate her with Clint and Clint with her?

Possible, but irrelevant. It is working and that is what matters. 

She has played it cool so far and it has served well enough, “Love is for children. I owe him a debt.”

Debt. That resonates with something in him. She feels it like a vibration through a silken cord. 

He retreats. 

Strategic or subliminal?

“Tell me.”

Part order, part offer. 

He turns his back briefly and sits on the bench on the far wall as though it were a throne. 

A trade? 

Information for information? 

Nothing as straight forward as that. He is all strange angles and motives within motives. 

Simple curiosity? 

No. He is many things; simple is not one of them. 

He wants to crack her open, get to her soft center; he is trying to find where to twist the knife. 

He does not yet know that she does not have a soft center. 

He will learn. 

Which way to play this?

No way to know what exactly Clint has said. 

No embellishing then.

Appeal to his sense of amorality with her own. 

She sits, turning her back briefly, matching his steps. 

“Before I worked for SHIELD I... well, I made a name for myself. I have a very specific skillset. I did not care who I used it for. Or on.”

Another hit. 

She is on the right track. 

“I got on SHIELD's radar in a bad way. Agent Barton was sent to kill me; he made a different call.”

She lets a hint of emotion slip at the end, as though contemplating her own mortality is effecting her, some small seeming of sentimentality. 

Here, she tells him. Stab here. 

This time his reaction is subtle. 

Anger? 

No. 

Jealously? 

Closer. 

Longing. 

Yes. 

Of being spared? Of being cared for? Or maybe he has a death wish?

She catalogs the impression for later and moves on. 

“And what will you do if I vow to spare him?”

She refuses him the one thing she knows for certain that he does not want. 

_Walk into my parlor._

“Not let you out.”

Loki laughs, “Ah, no. But I like this.”

He leans forward, engaged. 

“Your world in the balance, and you bargain for one man?”

She has his attention. 

Keep him focused on Clint. 

“Regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over that, I'm Russian,” she gives the impression of a shrug, “Or was.” 

She tells him she had no loyalties and sees her meaning strike true. 

She is close. 

He wants to give it to her. 

He wants more than anything to be _seen_. 

She can feel it in the shape of the trap they are circling around. 

“And what are you now?” The question is more important to him than he wants it to appear. 

Closer. 

Now to teases the edges. 

Just a little more and he will hand over the keys to the kingdom and think himself clever.

He just needs a little push. 

She stands, walk towards him; crosses her arms again. 

“It's really not that complicated. I've got red in my ledger, I'd like to wipe it out.”

There. 

The damn breaks and he begins to monologue- they always do, they all want to show off their brilliance. 

It comes in a flood, more that she needed. More than she wanted. It’s almost too much to collate. 

“Can you? Can you wipe out that much red? Drakov’s daughter?“

Oh, Clint. No. 

Fear and sorrow ripple through her; she goes with it, using her pain to fuel her art. 

Drakov’s daughter. 

Zoya. 

Her first kill. 

A single bullet. 

Quick. 

Efficient. 

She was supposed to draw it out. 

Make it hurt. 

A lesson for her as well as the rest of the girls. 

It was not the first time she defied their orders, but the aftermath was the first time she understood the true depth of defiance’s cost. 

Clint is telling her that he can not be saved and that she will need to be the one to put him down. He is asking her for a single bullet and all debts cleared and he knows how much it will cost her and he is asking her anyway. 

And he is right. 

It has to be her. 

“São Paulo?”

What? What was São Paulo? 

She lets her confusion come across as disbelief. As pain.

There is another message there, but she cannot see it. 

What is she missing. 

“The hospital fire.”

Each tidbit is less helpful than the first. 

The fire is easy. 

It’s all going to burn to the ground, leaving nothing but scorched earth and smoking bones. 

She cannot stop it. 

She should run. 

Thanks, Clint, but she had already figured that out. 

And telling her to run has never worked out for him. 

“Barton told me everything,” he stands and stalks towards her, “Your ledger is dripping, it's gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?”

She feels a flash of amusement that she doesn’t show. Her red isn’t the blood she’s spilled, or the lives she’s destroyed. 

Her red is one man. 

Clint Barton. 

Clint saved her life, in more ways than one. Saving Clint, freeing him from his enthrallment- one way or another, will will clear her debt. 

“This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer... pathetic!”

Now. 

Now she can see into the core of him. 

“You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers.”

There it is again, projecting his inner turmoil onto her. 

Or, rather, what Clint has made him think is her. 

Misdirecting the truth, so deep in his feelings he is nearly blinded by them. 

“You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away.”

She sees it coming, he is telegraphing everything now; she chooses to flinch, jumping back a little as he slams his fist against the glass. 

“I won't touch Barton. Not until I make him kill you! Slowly. Intimately. In every way he knows you fear!”

She lets fear and tears fill her eyes; he wants to crush her and she will give him exactly want he wants as long as she gets what she needs. 

“And when he'll wake just long enough to see his good work,” she turns and walks away, letting him think he has won, that he has torn her down, “And when he screams, I'll split his skull! This is my bargain, you mewling quim!” 

Maybe he does think her weak for being female. He just keeps disappointing her. 

He is begging her to let him tell her his glorious plan and she is so close to knowing exactly what to say. 

Something teases at the edges of her mind, she’s not sure what but she trusts her instincts; she whispers just loud enough for him to hear, “You are a monster.”

He laughs, “No, you brought the monster.”

She feels a surge of triumph and turns back around; poised, “So, Banner... that's your play?”

“What?”

She loves this most of all. 

Her prey finally realizing she was in control all along, their point of view twisting until they see the path she laid and each step that brought them to their ruin. 

She turns on her comm, “Loki means to unleash the Hulk. Keep Banner in the lab, I am on my way. Send Thor as well.”

As she leaves, she says her only truly sincere words since she entered the room, “Thank you for your cooperation.”

~Coda~

Later, after the battle is over and the smoke has cleared, after they are full and bandaged and in the run down comfort of Clint’s apartment (thankfully spared from most of the damage), they lean against each other on his ratty couch, aching for sleep that’s just out of reach. 

“São Paulo?” 

“What?” Clint murmurs in confusion.

“Loki. When I was interrogating him, he brought up Zoya, São Paulo, and the hospital fire.”

“Damn, that’s all? I hoping he would give you Harlem,” Clint yawns, “Give you Hulk and New York wrapped in a bow.”

“Okay, but seriously. What was with São Paulo?”

“Oh,” he yawns again and dips his head onto her shoulder, “Was another Hulk reference.”

“ _Shut gorokhovyy_ ,” she pokes him in the side and he squirms. 

“What? No,” he sulks, “No poking.”

“That was Rio, Clint,” she says, letting him settle down, “You ran naked through the streets declaring yourself, “King of the Carnivale”; how could you forget that?”

“What? A guy can’t let off a little steam at Carnivale?”

“It was April. Carnivale is in March. And again: Rio, not São Paulo.”

Clint shrugs, nestling in closer, “In my defense, I was very, very, drunk.”

She sighs and pets his hair a little, “Go to sleep, Clint. I’ll keep watch.”

“M’kay.”

When he’s mostly asleep, in that state where he may hear her but won’t remember, where she can pass it off as a dream, she whispers, “Thank you for not making me kill you.”

“Love you, too, Tash,” he whispers back. 

And if she smiles, and feels her heart come back to her, no one has to know but her.

**Author's Note:**

> Shut gorokhovyy: Russian idiom for fool.


End file.
